


In Black and White

by Riona



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Bisexual Shuichi, Gen, Post-Game, references to one-sided Shuichi/Kaito + Kaede
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-22 02:38:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14298966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riona/pseuds/Riona
Summary: Shuichi sets out to learn more about who he is and who he once was.





	In Black and White

As survivors of the killing game, it turns out Shuichi, Maki and Himiko are each entitled to a fairly hefty sum of money. Shuichi wonders whether that played a role in his decision to apply. Did he really expect himself to survive, though? It’s hard to imagine.

The first thing he does with the money, after he, Maki and Himiko have found accommodation together, is hire legal help and demand to see the production notes for _Danganronpa V3_.

The files arrive by e-mail while the others are out; Maki is at the gym, probably, and Himiko is away on an aikido course. He spends half a day pacing around the apartment before he works up the courage to open the message. It’d be good to walk around outside instead, get some fresh air, but he can’t stand all the strangers coming up and trying to ask him about _Danganronpa_.

At last he braces himself. Sits down at his desk, in front of his laptop. (He kind of hates using it. _Danganronpa_ is all over the internet as well.) Starts to read.

He was half-hoping to find descriptions of all the murders written in advance. To know that Kaede didn’t make the decision to create that trap herself: that the producers forced her somehow, controlled her. But it’s clear that the murders weren’t plotted by anyone working on the show. There are notes reacting to the deaths that happened or speculating on ones that _might_ happen; there are a few notes on things they could do to push things one way or another.

_First Blood Perk tends to encourage straightforward physical attack on a weaker member of the cast. Could Shuichi be our first victim? It’d mean we can’t run the love triangle plot, but it might make for good character development for Kaede._

_First death: Rantaro. ‘Culprit’: Kaede. Definitely going to have to scrap the love triangle plot._

_She didn’t take the First Blood Perk! Great news. First Blood Perk never goes down well; people want a trial. Sometimes you have to get things moving, though._

_Ryoma not playing well with audiences. People think he looks weird. Good chance we’ll be able to get rid of him if we go with the video motives this round._

Shuichi finds himself shaking. All those people dead, because that’s what _plays well_ with an audience. All those people created just to die.

They were real to him, and he cared about them. Those ‘fictional characters’ were the only real people in his life. His uncle was an actor, a false memory someone shoved into his head.

And they would never have existed without the killing game. Wishing they had never died is like wishing they had never been born. _Danganronpa_ took so much from him, but it was what gave those connections to him in the first place.

He hates feeling that he owes it anything.

He opens the file called _drv3 character outlines_. Maybe it’ll give him an idea of how far the people who matter to him really did come from _Danganronpa_ ’s character writers. How much is real, how much was implanted. Or perhaps ‘original’ is a better word than ‘real’.

And that’s how he ends up staring at Shuichi Saihara’s character profile, under the heading ‘Romance’.

 

_\- bisexual_  
_\- attracted to Kaede_  
_\- attracted to Kaito_  
_\- repressed_  
_\- romantic coward, would never confess_

 

_Bisexual_. Is he bisexual? It’s crossed his mind before, the question of whether he can really consider himself straight, but he’s never managed to pin it down; maybe that’s the ‘repressed’ part coming into play. And here’s the answer, just staring back at him from the screen, in a document someone else wrote.

He remembers lying awake some nights, worrying about maybe-crushes on schoolmates who probably never existed. And, of course, there’s Kaito. There was definitely something there.

Something that wasn’t his own feeling. Something that they _put_ in him.

He wants to throw up, as if that could somehow get rid of it, all the calculated manipulation of his personality for ratings. But if he could really do that, if he could rip up the way he feels about Kaito, about Kaede...

Well, maybe everything would hurt less, but it feels like it would just be another loss.

-

Maki gets back from the gym in the evening, her hair still wet from the shower. She heads straight into the kitchen and starts filling the kettle for tea.

Shuichi hovers in the doorway until she looks at him.

“What?” she asks, flatly.

Kaito would probably have noticed Shuichi was silently freaking out, asked him what was wrong. But neither of Shuichi’s surviving friends are that good at picking up on other people’s emotions. He’s had to learn to be direct when he’s struggling.

“Can I talk to you?” he asks.

“You’re talking to me now.”

He breathes in, preparing himself. “The production notes came through. There are profiles for all of our... characters.”

Her eyes widen, and she puts the kettle down hard on the countertop. “Did you read anything about me?”

There’s danger in her voice.

“No,” Shuichi lies. _Likes cute things, sweets; they remind her of the children at the orphanage. Attracted to Kaito and angry about it. Would let a friend die to achieve her goals._ “It’s... I’m bisexual.”

He realises halfway through speaking that he’s _coming out_ , and he kind of stumbles over the word.

Maki looks at him for a moment. “I mean, that’s fine. I’d kind of guessed.”

“No, what I’m saying is – wait, you’d guessed?”

Maki shrugs. “Suspected? I don’t know. I haven’t thought that much about it. I’m just saying I’m not surprised.”

Somehow it doesn’t seem fair that she knew about this before he did. Although... so did the entire production team, he supposes.

“What I’m saying is _Shuichi_ is bisexual,” he says. “Shuichi Saihara. The character.”

“You,” she says.

“I don’t know what I was before,” he says. “There were notes saying how I was meant to feel about Kaede and... and Kaito.”

She tenses at his name, just barely. He probably wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been specifically watching for her reaction.

“And... they’re important feelings to me, but now I don’t know if they have any... weight, I guess? Anything to them that wasn’t just scripted, I mean.” He’s avoiding her eyes. He’s a little afraid that she’ll rip into him for whining about this when she’s been dealing with the same thing for months, ever since she learnt her own feelings for Kaito were planned out by someone else. “I don’t know if I’d have been... drawn to... the same people if they hadn’t made me into Shuichi.”

“Look at me,” Maki says.

He does, a little nervously. Sometimes he misses his hat.

“You’re Shuichi,” Maki says. “It’s pointless to think about what some stranger would have been like back there. This is who you get to be. You deal with it or you don’t.”

There’s a hint of Kaito in her bluntness sometimes. He left his mark on both of them. It’s ridiculous to think that Kaito wasn’t a real person. He felt more real than anyone out in this world.

“Do you want to... talk about it?” Shuichi asks. “Knowing they gave us these, uh, these feelings about—”

“No,” Maki says, dangerous again, and he almost laughs.

Maybe, with her help, he’ll eventually be able to believe that Shuichi is real as well.


End file.
